It's pretty wild that this i written just before Boccherini.

And people are experimenting with what the cello can do.

And this piece is, it goes kind of into, I'd say viola range.

It goes high, but not anything crazy.

And it's Boccherini who really takes things to the next level.

He really developed thumb position, and that's when we bring our thumb u and it becomes an extra finger.

So... ♪♪ And suddenly we can be a cello, we can be a viola, we can be a violin as well.

There's a few instances of thumb position beforehand.

We see it in Bach and stuf like that, but it's very sparse, very functional, and it's prett cool to think that just modern cello playing and modern cello making is all kind of coming together right around the same time.

Hey, let's play that by Boccherini sonata the one with that crazy thumb position.

Do you want to start?

- You start.

I'll take the next part.

- Ah ok, well switch.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Bravo.

Bravo, guys.

Even for us today, it's a real challenge to play with the thumb and to play high.

So even 300 years later, Boccherini is challenging us.

So, Paganini to the violin.

Boccheirni to the cello.

- Absolutely.

Boccheirni takes this new range of the cello, this violin range, and applies it to the string quartet genre making a cello quintet.

So two cellos.

Personally, I think all music should have two cellos.

And it at least!

- It makes things better.

But what's so cool about that is we have this added sonority, this whole new sound worl and genre of music and chamber music specifically.

And since then, many other composers have used this cello quintet format.

So we can thank Boccherini for that.

Absolutely.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ It's hard to imagine how original this was using a bass instrument to trade soprano lines with the first violin.

Only a virtuoso of Boccherinis caliber would even attempt it.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪